Revised Description Scene at Bus Stop

He had missed the 7:30 bus by literally a couple of feet. The driver passed by John without remorse as he frantically sprinted to the curb waving his arms higher and faster than an air traffic controller. Now he had to wait 20 minutes until the next bus going into Kansas City would drive by.

The air was cool and although the sunshine promised a clear day without rain, his gray wool cardigan with the wooden bowl buttons wasn’t enough to keep the chill from seeping in. John loved this sweater and wore it everyday. It was the one his son Keith had given him for his birthday the year before.

No one waited with him there on the corner of Botano Avenue and Chestnut Street. No cars drove by either. The town was still asleep this Sunday morning. John sat down on the scratched up aluminum bench underneath the graffitied bus sign and stared out at the monotonous suburb neighborhood that stretched out before him. House, driveway, car. House driveway, car. House, driveway, car. The pattern was broken by a Fleetwood RV hooked up to a red pick up, that jutted out onto the street.

He noticed a few feet away stood a naked tree that was sprouting red buds. It was the beginning of spring yet John felt as though it were still winter. Up in the branches a clump of mud and sticks housed a little bird chirping loudly.

John walked over to the tree to get a closer look.

The bird started to chirp more furiously.

John instantly thought about Keith and how this time last year they had found a little bird with a broken wing in their backyard. Keith had asked his father to make the little bird stop crying. He just wanted him to feel better. John’s mind slipped back to that memory last year, to his son’s toothless smile as he watched the bird fly away again for the first time. They had celebrated the joyous event with pickles and salami on white bread with spicy mustard, Keith’s favorite food, even though he didn’t have the two front teeth necessary to chew them at that time.

John turned his head down to the floor and just as he was about to take a step, he stopped. Beneath him, on the concrete was a clump of lifeless fuzzy feathers and a beak. Just a baby bird, he must have fallen trying to leave the nest. John stared at the bird a moment and could see nothing else but its lifeless body. Behind him he could only hear the cries coming from the other bird. The sight of death again so soon made something in John snap and he was overwhelmed with emotions. Right there on the deserted corner of Botano and Chestnutt on that early Sunday morning, John felt his body numb and he could do nothing to keep the streams of tears falling from his face. His heavy body sagged to the ground and he sobbed loudly and uncontrollably as if he were the last remaining man in all the world.

He did not stop until he saw the 7:50 bus whiz by him.

A Spring Morning

He had missed the 7:30 bus by literally a couple of feet. The driver passed by John without remorse as he frantically sprinted to the curb waving his arms higher and faster than an air traffic controller. Now he had to wait at least 20 minutes for whenever the next bus would arrive going into Kansas City.

The air was cool and although the sunshine promised a clear day without rain, his gray wool cardigan with the wooden bowl buttons wasn’t enough to keep the chill from seeping in. John loved this sweater and wore it everyday. It was the one his son Keith had given him for his birthday last year.

No one waited with him there on the corner of Botano Avenue and Chestnut Street. No cars drove by either. The town was still asleep this Sunday morning. John sat down on the scratched up aluminum bench underneath the graffitied bus sign and stared out at the monotonous suburb neighborhood that stretched out before him. House, driveway, car. House driveway, car. House, driveway, car. The pattern was broken by an RV that jutted out onto the street.

He noticed a few feet away stood a naked tree that was sprouting red buds. It was the beginning of Spring yet John felt like winter. Up in the branches a clump of mud and sticks housed a little bird chirping loudly. Chirp. Chirp chirp.

John walked over to the tree to get a closer look.

“What’s the matter? You hungry?”

The bird started to chirp more furiously.

John thought about Keith and how this time last year they had found a little bird with a broken wing in their backyard. Keith had wanted his father to make the little bird stop crying. He asked his father to make him feel better. Although John was able to save the bird, he could not say the same for Keith.

He turned his head down to the floor and just as he was about to take a step, he stopped. Beneath him, on the concrete was a clump of lifeless fuzzy feathers and a beak. Just a baby bird, he must have fallen trying to leave the nest. John stared at the bird a moment and could see nothing else but its lifeless body. Behind him he could only the little bird’s cries. The sight of death again so soon made something in John snap and within seconds he was overwhelmed with feelings. He started sobbing uncontrollably and was paralyzed with sadness. He could not move, even for the 7:50 bus that whizzed by.

Analyzing Writing Style

So this week, I picked up a book to read for enjoyment, not at all related to school, and altough its not a fiction work, the writers (there are two) are hilarious. I literally laugh out loud reading what they write. They have this way of making the details so ridiculous--yet they are real and it makes it all the more interesting.

The book is called "The Ridiculous Race" about two guys in their thirties, who are comic writers for different television programs, who decide to race around the world without using airplanes. The first person who come back to LA wins the most expensive bottle of Scotch they can find in the city. The authors are Steve Hely and Vali Chandrasekaran.

Here are some examples of the details that made me laugh out loud, the absurdity in truth.

Vali describing his companion/translator in Mexico:

" For starters, she was beautiful. I'm not great at describing people. so bear with me. She was somewhere between zero and twenty feet tall and h ad mocha-colored skin. She had either two eyes or two mouths. He hair was long, brown, and luxurious--like a brown Lamborghini. And her personality was even better than her looks. She was funny, smart, and sexy--like a slightly nicer brown Lamborghini. Once, while in mexico, a waiter made eye contact with me, pointed to Juliana, and then gave me a thumbs-up. "Craigslist," I mouthed back." (17)

" She was born and raised in Colombia, the most kidnap krazy country on Earth, with a kidnapping incidence of over 10 times its nearest competitor. I thought I felt a chill run down my spine, but it turned out to just be an ant. The incredibly high Colombian kidnapping rate meant there was a good chance that Juliana had kidnapped someone at least once before." (16)

Steve starting his trip by trying to find a ship to take him across the Pacific:

"With the help of the daring traveler's greatest friend, the Internet, I learned of a German company called NSB (short for Niederelbe Schiffahrtsgesellscaft Buxtehude, which at no point in my trip did I hear anyone pronounce.)" (31)

"Aside from trying on my snug, plush orange survival suit and getting a seat assigned in the lifeboat, Hanjin Athens seemed about as exciting as a giant floating Kinkos." (34)

Vali's attempt to buy a jetpack in Mexico to get across the Atlantic ocean:

"As he strapped the pinnacle of modern engineering to my bnack, he told me three things: 1) The jetpack can hold only thirty seconds worth of fuel. Adding more fuel makes the jetpack to heavy to take off. SO until another safe fuel with better weight to stored energy ratio can be found, thirty seconds in the max amount of time a jetpack will fly. It turns out that's why NASA abandoned its jetpack program. I asked Juan if it would take longer than thirty seconds to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. He said yes." (50)

Anyways, there are lots more examples, but I think its the seriousness or the "realness" of the ridiculous or tone that these writers use, that just makes it so funny.

'Unspectacular'

Here's the assignment that was due today:

Eggs for Breakfast

The day he died, grandma had made him eggs for breakfast. Usually she scrambled two and left them plain, and then grandpa would squeeze on half a bottle of ketchup himself. But this particular morning, grandma decided to melt some cheese and fry some turkey bacon (it was on sale that week), to put alongside his breakfast. The coffee wasn’t extra strong, but served the way it always was, with a dribble of milk and two spoons of sugar. (Grandpa liked his coffee the way he liked his conversation, light and sweet.) The morning paper’s headline shouted out nothing more spectacular than the day before, and the sun was shining just as brightly as any other April morning that week. Yet at precisely 8:14 am, grandpa’s heart stopped beating and so his breakfast went cold and had to be thrown away.

The Forgettable Unforgettable Assignment

Fourteen and a freshman in high school, Sarah Little could think of nothing worst than having to come to school with a bright red zit the size of Machu Pichu on the tip of her nose. She arrived at Minot High School that morning a bit frazzled and upset, after having to remind her mother for the N-teenth time NOT to drop her off in front of the building. She would much rather be dropped off in front of the City Hall and walk the extra seven minutes to school on her own, despite the hail that was falling steadily the size of wombats outside.

To add to the trouble, in first period, Sarah discovered that her best friend was wearing the same exact shirt that day. How embarrassing! To have to spend the entire day with someone wearing the same shirt as if they had planned it, as if they were in the 4th grade again! There was no other choice, but for her to trudge to her locker and pull out that crappy black fleece sweater that she kept in there for “emergencies”—the sweater that always caused her hair to fly up in static lightning storms, making everything she touched turn into a field of hyperactive electric shocks.

The day did not improve. In Italian class that day, they were having a quiz on the conjugation of the near past participles. “Io ho. Tu hai. Egli… egli… arghhh! I won’t be able to have these memorized before 8th period!” she thought frantically.

So she determined the wisest thing to do was to make a little cheat sheet for herself out of the corner of her math notebook. When she got to class, she slipped the little piece of paper under her quiz and was sure no one would notice.

Mr. D (short for Mr. Di Giovanni) started to announce the quiz. “Numero uno, classe, numero uno…”

“Psst. Sarah.”

It was Nathan. The boy Sarah had had a crush on since the first day of school. He was the captain of the boys’ freshmen soccer team and every time he called her name, she blushed a fuchsia color.

“Sarah. Can I borrow a pen?”

Sarah couldn’t look him in the eye. “Yea, sure, take mine.”

“Sarah! What are you talking about back there?” shouted Mr. D.

“Nothing. Sorry,” Sarah blushed again. Then she fished around her backpack looking for another pen to write with. By the time she found one, Mr D was already onto number 5.

“Classe, numero cinque, numero cinque classe…”

Number five already! She raised her hand and asked Mr. D to repeat himself. He refused and Sarah sat there at the back of the room with her head hanging low.

After the teacher had finished reciting the questions, he came to where she was and sat besides Sarah and began to repeat the questions to the quiz she had missed. In a scramble for her to grab her pen and begin to write them down, her quiz paper flew up in the air and down fluttered her little cheat sheet like a floating butterfly, slowly slowly making its way, right down to the floor, to land right on top of the teacher’s shoe.

“What’s this?” Mr. D picked up the paper. “Aha. So not only were you talking, not listening, but you were planning to cheat as well. You know what that means?” He raised his voice louder calling the attention of the entire class to the back of the room.

“A big fat zero.”

Sarah was mortified. She sat there for the remainder of class with a lump in her throat the size of a cannon ball.

As the bell rang to end the day, Nathan handed her her pen back.

“Uh. Thanks.” And he walked out the door, laughing about what, she was certain she did not want to know.

Sarah felt the tears welling up inside of her. She tried to hold them back, but one tiny drop managed to escape and run down her cheek and across her nose to the tip of Machu Pichu. It struggled, but could not make it’s way over the peak and so sank down into the crevasse between her nostril and her cheek bone and stayed there.

Cliche' Characters...

So these are a few cliche characters I came up with, although after writing them down, I felt like they were all from movies I've seen rather than books, but I guess that doesn't matter.


Miss. Susie Doozey or Cinderella: the awkward, unpopular teenage girl, who somehow meets the cool popular jock, lets her hair fall down, puts on contacts and a tight dress and voila—a deep passionate romance ensues.

Break it:

Fred the Drunk: Cliché party kid who is never sober. His only actions are drinking, partying and then vomiting when the night is over, and usually making a fool of himself. He’s usually part of the ‘cool kid crowd’ as well.

Break it:

The feminist: She hates men, is strong and independent, has had her heart broken, but attracts some guy based on her incredible intelligence and somehow the guy manages to make her fall in love and they live happily ever after.

Break it:

The rich bitch: She’s popular but no one really likes her, has her own little clique of snobs. She picks on the heroine of the story and in the end gets what she deserves, humiliation.

Break it: She runs into the girl she picked on like ten years later, sweet revenge… Maybe in a job interview, with the girl she picked on as the boss or employer.

Ms. Worry Wart: she is usually a comical character that worries about everything, a mother or a nerd, someone who is constantly questioning whether something is safe or a good idea. Perhaps the goody-two-shoes.

Break it: She gets herself hurt or killed in the most ironic of ways, perhaps by following the rules.

The artist: Enough said. The starving but brilliant artist with so much talent to give to the world. Egoist beyond all belief.

Break it: Decides to actually get a job, instead of stay a starving artist. Perhaps something really embarrassing like being a kids cartoon character in costume at birthday parties. He never gets discovered. No American Dream fulfilled here.

Hometown Exercise...

Parker Street was my childhood home, an infinite street within finite borders. Without knowledge of what lie beyond the corner, some of the dirtiest slums in Newark, I only knew the great uneven gray sidewalks that went from one cornet to the next. Where giant oak and maple trees shaded the pavements and where every house on the block was unique in shape, color and size, making Parker Street a quilt of architectural homes patched together by the people that resided there together. On our left, there was the brick house where no one lived, and in the backyard bloomed a wild rose bush. My brother and I would sneak through the gap in the shrubs to steal roses in the summer and pretend it was our own secret garden. Further down the block was Shawnee and Shavonee’s house, the Puerto Rican Jehovah’s Witnesses whose daughters would sneak upstairs into our apartments sometimes and steal our mangoes from the fruit basket. Their father’s company, Chico’s Roofing, owned a pink van which had murals of imitation Disney characters painted all over the sides. Then came Alfred and Alexandra’s mansion. Really only a large house, but at the front sat two stone lions which, to me, as a young girl symbolized only the finest of homes. With the twins and my brother at my side, we rode the block on our bicycles up and down spring and summer. Until Autumn stole the greens from the tree tops and soon we would take turns riding down to the end of the block where the big acorn tree grew and collect buckets of acorns to put in our backyard for the squirrels to easy When autumn would arrive, we would take turns riding down to the end of the block where the big acorn tree grew and collect buckets of acorns for the squirrel’s convenience as they prepared for their winter slumbers.

Thelma Dudley Characterization Scene

A thick wall of humidity greeted Thelma as she exited the air conditioned freezers of the Dudley Butcher Barn. She unzipped her poufy down jacket and placed it down on the rolls of extra butcher paper beside her gloves and scarf. She made her way down the concrete corridor, out the door and across the gravel parking lot to her beat up ‘91 Ford pickup. The wipers swooshed against the dry windshield when she turned the key, smearing heat and dirt across the glass. Thelma smoothed out her light pink dress which she had worn underneath her jacket, and exchanged her heavy fishing boots for a pair of scuffed white flip flops. She studied herself in the rearview mirror for a moment. Her blond curls had flattened in the summer heat. Her matador red lipstick had faded from her lips, and the mascara had smudged from her lashes, making the circles under her eyes appear deeper than they really were. She opened her glove compartment and pulled out a string of artificial pearls and clasped them around her neck.

Every Wednesday in the summers after work, Thelma would drive 40 minutes to Forsyth Park, on the opposite side of Savannah, where the city held a “Culture Concert” series. And for sixty minutes Thelma would sit on a rusted metal folding chair, upon uneven clumps of splotchy yellow grass and pretend to be those second rate performers coming from all across the great state of Georgia, on the stage. Any person on that stage, she thought, would be better than being Thelma Dudley, the butcher’s daughter.

Critique of "Whippoorwill"

*There was a lot of great images in this piece:

“I was dusty and road-weary, had touched the shores of California…”

“…white and red flames curving upon black miles…”

“I rounded the truck and saw Gade standing just within the wooded area, staring up into the sky, singing his Hank Williams ballad to a three-quarter moon.”

“Gabe was offering something up into the high darkness.”

*Gabe felt like a developed and interesting character: I like this feeling of him as “He drove and smoked and kept largely silent.” And the description of his wedding, “Only time I ever wore an ironed tee shirt.” His peculiarities give him life.

*The narrator however, I felt was a little vague and abstract, perhaps that was intended? I wanted to know about why he dreaded the “Got a girlfriend” inquiry. Was that solely because he was afraid the truckers were coming onto him? I also wanted to know more about this line: “Twenty-three years seemed vast and paltry, and I wished I were already home.” Why is that?

*Also, I wanted to know why this narrator chose to recall this memory… two decades later. Is there a connection to his present life. Where is he going with it?

Thelma Dudley

Thelma Dudley was born in Savannah Georgia to Phil and Judy Dudley. She was the oldest of six children and although she grew up with her father's insistent pressures for her to take over the family butcher shop, she dreamed of becoming a singer on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera house in New York City.

Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini were foreign names to her growing up, sounding more like pasta dishes than anything else--yet their music worked their way into her brain long bfore their names had any significance to her.

It all stated the summer of her sophomore year in high school, when she had to work the back of the butcher shop, running and i and out of the freezers, wearing athick winter jacket whilst her friends ran around outside barefoot in shorts and tanks. She found an old radio in the back to play to keep time from jolting to a stop, unfortunately or fortunately, the only station she could get reception from, way back in the freezer was 97.5--the only classical radio station in all of Georgia.

Bank Robber Scene...

I focused more on the teller than the bank robber... and this is what came about...

***

“Stick ‘em…up”, the masked robber announced calmly pointing the black handgun to the teller’s window. The elderly teller with the coke bottle lenses and badly dyed mauve hair lifted her saggy arms to the sky exposeing her woolly armpits. She squinted, causing all the creases in her face to become more pronounced, and cocked her head forward, trying to get a better look at the robber. In all of her 28 years working in the Minot Savings Bank in North Dakota, she had often daydreamed of a stick up during the dull muggy summer afternoons, but she never thought she’d see the day when it would actually happen.
She imagined this scene—and several variations—dozens of times: the masked robber coming in, shouting to “Stick ‘em up”. She imagined panic that would spread across the bank lobby, the high pitched screams of the ladies and the deeper gasps of the gentlemen customers. Her repulsive manager, the round stuffy man whose shirt was usually drenched in sweat, would start to drip profusely splotches of salty sweat onto the cold concrete floor, while he remained tied to a chair in the locked safe.
In every fantasy of the bank robber scene, the old teller could never decide if she became the hero or if the robber took her hostage and she had to be rescued by a good Samaritan in the bank lobby. The teller felt a sensation of excitement pass through her, a feeling she hadn’t experienced since her late husband passed away more than ten years ago.
“What are you staring at you old hag?! Turn around!” the robber shouted.
She complied reluctantly. She didn’t want to miss any of the action to follow. The only thing she could make out now was the chipped brick wall in need of fresh coat of white paint. The woman heard the robber bark orders of filling the bags with money to the other teller. She was a younger woman who still held ambitions and hopes for making something of herself in the world. She nervously fumbled with the keys trying to locate the correct one to open the registers. Her face, normally glowing with a natural blush was now as white as the florescent lights shining down upon them from the ceiling.
The lobby was empty and the usual crowd of people that come on their lunch break had already returned to work. The bank was silent except for the clanging of the keys, the nervous breathing of the young teller, and the ticking of the clock. The older teller started to tap her foot impatiently.
“What the hell are you doing?” Stop that!”
She did immediately. She scanned the room without moving her neck and was reminded that she was within close reach of the security call button. Easily, she could have maneuvered herself without being noticed, to hit the button, yet the old woman didn’t budge. All her focus and frustrations were on the fact that she couldn’t see what was going on behind her.

In the Beginning...

This is my first entry for the required blog for Writing Fiction. I wrote a blog for several years, starting back in high school, but I stopped... mostly because I felt that my needs and purpose for writing there had long since changed... and so now, as this is a requirement of the class, perhaps it will motivate me to write again online...

~d.s.s